Republicans block Cantwell amendment

Sen. Maria Cantwell’s proposal to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent over the next 20 years was narrowly defeated on a mostly party-line vote. The proposed amendment to the Senate’s energy bill failed 53-47, with only three Republicans joining all but one Democrat.

Cantwell, D-Wash., expressed disappointment with the outcome, noting that Democrats, Republicans and President Bush have all agreed that the nation should move to lessen its dependence on foreign supplies. The United States currently imports 58 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil it consumes every day.

“Unfortunately, the concern we’ve been hearing from the president and Republican leaders about America’s dependence on foreign oil is just empty rhetoric,” Cantwell said. “They had a chance to throw a strike for the economic and national security of our nation, and they balked.”

Yeah, well… that’s because Bush’s financial patrons make a butt-load of money importing oil… so we wouldn’t want to do anything to upset the status quo. Besides, without all that foreign oil to protect, how would we ever justify the trillions of dollars we spend on the military industrial complex?

Whatever. Kudos to Sen. Cantwell for calling the administration’s bluff.

We don’t ask meth-heads to get by on 40% less crank, do we? I think all but 3 of the Senate Republicans understand this and the Senate Democrats should be ashamed of proposing it…

No, seriously…. I think I should be allowed to trade “fuel credits” in a “fuel market” with other fuel consumers. In this manner, people wealthy enough to have drivers would still collect credits and be able to sell them where there is a demand- those not wealthy enough to have been born with a chauffeur. Even the chauffeur is able to participate in this market! What a good idea! We could do that with EVERYTHING! Children, spleens, the air we breath…

You know, it’s impossible to do satire these days… what else can the theocons destroy? They’ve made satire… simply unobtainable.

Stefan how now posted on SS homepage “KING 5 has the names of the voters whose absentee ballots King County failed to count last November. The ballot envelopes were released by King County this afternoon in response to my records request.”

GEEEE-ZUZ!!! This guy can’t even tell the truth about something as mundane as a public records request. KING COUNTY RELEASED THE LIST TO KING 5 NEWS IN RESPONSE TO A PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST BY KING 5 NEWS. Stefan’s request was DENIED — he even says so himself. KC doesn’t comply with the PDA by releasing records requested by King 5 to Stefan Sharkansky. It’s gotta release the records to the person who requested them. Even my kids know that!

Does this guy think nobody will notice his ridiculous fibs, or is lying something he does so subconsciously he doesn’t even know he’s lying?

So monkey faced Baby Bush CLAIMS on the radio he wants an energy bill, we offer him one, and he visits Field Marshall Karl Rove and instructs him to order the lackey brigade to vote this one down. What an asshole.

Yawn – it’s 6:45 AM – somewhere out there Mr. Cynical Idiot is rolling out of his bunk in the camper parked in BIAW’s parking lot, standing in his briefs making his first cuppa coffee, and will soon be making the 30-second commute (i.e., stroll) across the parking lot to his cubicle in the cold dank basement of the BIAW building. Yawn. We’ll be hearing from him soon.

Fuck you, fire_one. I was working my ass off and fighting a war when your mommy was changing your diapers. (Does she still do that for you, or do you have to change your own now?) I don’t have to work anymore and I EARNED that. If you don’t like it, go to another blog.

Maria, Maria; were any of you here when she lost after 2 yrs in the House; ran ads saying Rick White was going to put oil drilling platforms in PUget Sound? She ran hysterical ads , that many think cost her the election.

I’ll bet she has a thing for Robert Kennedy Jr, the moron head of the Kennedy oil consortium

What is missing from HA and the PI is exactly how Ms. Cantwell wanted to lower our dependence on foreign oil. Gosh, if we’d all just stop driving our cars and flying across country every weekend to visit out constituents, maybe demand for oil would decrease.

What was defeated was an amendment that sounded good but wasn’t going to have any impact on oil supplies. It’s like building mass transit that no one plans on riding. Nice concept, but wasted effort.

Wonder when Bush is gonna invade Canada? He sure wants their tar sands.

Comment by Roger Rabbit— 6/17/05 @ 12:43 am Roger we have already invade Canada, they all left Seattle after the election. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s proposal to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil by 40 percent over the next 20 years was defeated. Goldy what did she propose, maybe it was a dumb idea? We could start by only allowing cars in Seattle that weight 2000 pounds or less, and that get 80 miles to a gallon. You folks can now lead the way by makeing that a law. Cantwell friends now run the whole state what’s their problem?

I assume that all those opposed to drilling in ANWR walk to work, and grow all their own food. Otherwise, they are draining oil supplies.

Must be nice to live in a happy little bubble where hard choices are never needed. When ANWR was established, drilling was already planned. Now, the wacko Luddites want to go back to the stone age where we never develop anything, and we all just disappear from the face of the earth.

If we had more Maria Cantwells in the Senate, this nation would not be in such sorry shape. Imagine–a senator who actually wants to discuss serious issues, like our nation’s foreign energy dependence, rather than nonsense like Teri Schiavo. Cantwell is open-minded and thoughtful, an actual adult among ideological clowns. As for those who would propose that drilling ANWR would do anything to impact our nation’s foreign energy dependence, you simply have your heads buried in the tundra. The five minutes of oil that ANWR might provide would go down as fast, and have as much impact, as a half-can of Schmidt’s Malt Liquor in a street bum’s hand.

You’re nuts, Janet. ANWR makes a negligible contribution to the world’s oil supply. Current U.S. consumption is 7 billion bbls. a year; ANWR has somewhere between 5 to 10 billion bbls. recoverable. That’s a 1-year supply. If they can get it out without environmental damage fine, but many people believe industry is understanding and soft-peddling the impacts (don’t they always) – why do you think environmentalists are universally opposed to this? The main point is ANWR drilling DOESN’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM!!!

I assume that all those opposed to drilling in ANWR walk to work, and grow all their own food.

I don’t like to brag, but I do ride my bike to work, walk, ride the bus, etc. And we’ve got quite a nice garden going, thank you.

But the question is, do the people who favor drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge walk to work, grow their own food, etc.? Are they doing everything they can to make drilling in wildlife refuges unnecessary?

Unfortunately the world still has plenty of fossil fuels – all of it dirtier and more expensive than petroleum. Roughly 3 trillion barrels of oil in tar sands, with deposits in Canada and Venezuela that each hold more oil than the Middle East. You extract tar sands oil by strip mining the soil, using 3 barrels of water for every barrel of oil, and dumping literally mountain ranges of slag and oceans of polluted water somewhere. The U.S. has hundreds of billions of barrels of shale oil, but the expense and environmental damage of mining this stuff is even greater than tar sands. The world has a 300 to 500 year supply of coal, including huge untapped U.S. reserves, but we all know what coal mining does to the environment not to mention what burning the stuff does to the air and water quality — vast forests of acid-rain denuded trees, poisoned lakes, etc.

The wackiest energy theory I’ve seen was on a right wing website. If you think Stefan is weird, wait til you hear this. This guy thinks oil is inexhaustible, yes, will literally last forever, because you see there are gigantic caverns in the earth’s mantle filled with oil that seeps upward to REFILL oilfields, which consequently will never run dry. Just keep pumping forever, folks, and everything will be hunky-dory. There are lots of things wrong with this, I’ll mention just a couple. First of all, oil occupies tiny pores in reservoir rock, not underground caverns. Secondly, oil can’t physically exist more than 17,000 feet below the ground because any deeper and heat and pressure breaks it down into natural gas. Thirdly, there are plenty of depleted oilfields that indeed have been pumped dry (of the recoverable stuff anyway) which somehow doesn’t quite fit the theory.

The most fascinating energy theory I’ve seen involves Helium3. This is a helium atom with an extra proton or neutron, I forget which, and it creates a lot of energy when it splits. Kind of a “uranium lite.” He3 is extremely rare on Earth, only the tiniest trace amounts have ever been found in nature, but it is abundant on the surface of the moon. Now get this: 1 pound of He3 contains as much energy as 1 million pounds of gasoline. Yes, that’s right, for a given weight and volume, He3 produces a million times as much energy as petroleum fuels. Consequently, it would be cost effective to mine the stuff on the moon and fly a partially processed ore back to earth via space shuttle for further refining and concentration in terrestrial factories.

Nobody knows if this will work. An He3 reactor has never been built. Scientists are working on it, but funding is scarce, and knowledge in this field is still primitive. He3’s energy potential exists only in mathematical formulae and physics papers. If it DOES work, and a functioning reactor could be reduced to the size of say a car engine, you would buy a Helium fuel pellet that you would keep every time you traded in your car, and you would will it to your kids, and they would will it to your grandkids, and so on, because a fuel pellet the size of a marble would run for 1,000 years. Think of it, no gas stations, no oil companies.

Ooops. They just found two more murdered physicists in a ditch on a lonely country road. No one has any idea who perpetrated this dastardly crime. Third such incident this year.

Goldy you should have linked this article for your story…a lot more background, plus (gasp) the other side of this issue!

Yes, Cantwell looks good for proposing this, but as the article linked said:

“Skeptics also worry that even if Congress adopts the Cantwell provision or the Senate’s provision for reduction of a 1 million barrels a day, the legislation doesn’t have any teeth or ways to enforce the cuts.

Cantwell said her amendment would require the administration to report to Congress each year on its progress toward attaining the goal.”

So it was an unfunded and unenforcable mandate. She’s not up for election soon, is she?

If you want to criticize unfunded mandates, let’s talk about the cops and teachers laid off by cash-strapped local governments that were given Homeland Security mandates with no funding.

GOP voting record on Homeland Security:

Nov. 14, 2001: Senate Democrats propose $15 billion for homeland security; the White House warns against “permanent spending on other projects that have nothing to do with stimulus and that will only expand the size of government.”

Roger Rabbitt @ 37: So what does that have to do with the Cantwell proposal? Where did I defend Republican unfunded mandates? My point was, like so much Congress says or does, it doesn’t change anything as it has no effect. That’s true of both sides of the aisle.

You’re the one who brought up unfunded mandates, Jon. What goes around, comes around. If you’re gonna complain about Maria’s unfunded mandates, then I think it’s only fair to point out that the Republican administration and congress have been prolifigate with unfunded mandates. Kettle? Pot? You know — ?

Speaking of Senators, I heard John Carlson whining on KVI this afternoon about Sen. Richard Durban (D-Ill.). Carlson called Durban “disgraceful” for criticizing the U.S. Gov’t torture chambers at Gitmo. No John. You’re disgraceful. Also unpatriotic and anti-American. Oh and did I mention John — you’re disgraceful.

Some of you may wonder why a cute fluffly little bunny like me is listening to the evil and vile Carlson in the first place. Not for the content, believe you me. Nope, this has to do with the Rabbit Diet Plan. You won’t believe how great this works. No workouts. No gym fees. No special foods to buy. Eat whatever you want, whenever you want, binge eating is no problem. Just turn on KVI after eating. In about 20 seconds you’ll start retching and gagging, and pretty soon it all comes up, and practically nothing gets digested. You’re virtually guaranteed to lose weight. I lost 3 grams in my first week of listening to Carlson’s (choke)(gag)(retch) evil, vile, unpatriotic, anti-American, disgraceful, bullshit.

Want to know what we could do about energy independance? Just a bit amazed that Brazil is ahead of us on it?

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — While Americans fume at high gasoline prices, Carolina Rossini is the essence of cool at the pump.

Like tens of thousands of her fellow citizens, she is running her zippy red Fiat on pure ethanol extracted from Brazilian sugar cane. On a recent morning in Brazil’s largest city, the clear liquid was selling for less than half the price of gasoline, a sweet deal for the 26-year-old lawyer.

You’re nuts, Janet. ANWR makes a negligible contribution to the world’s oil supply. Current U.S. consumption is 7 billion bbls. a year; ANWR has somewhere between 5 to 10 billion bbls. recoverable. That’s a 1-year supply. If they can get it out without environmental damage fine, but many people believe industry is understanding and soft-peddling the impacts (don’t they always) – why do you think environmentalists are universally opposed to this? The main point is ANWR drilling DOESN’T SOLVE THE PROBLEM!!!

Comment by Roger Rabbit— 6/17/05 @ 2:27 pm

Roger Rabbit what are your fears today. (DEATH?), get a grip with life. Wher did you get all these facts, Green Pease or move on dot Org? Would be so kind to present you solution. Pease and Love Baby and past on the joint.

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